Why the ide­al Oscars host is… Nobody

The 91^st Acad­e­my Awards are fast approach­ing, and while all the talk at this stage usu­al­ly con­cerns which film is edg­ing ahead as the book­ies’ favourite, Hollywood’s biggest event instead finds itself mired in con­tro­ver­sy. The planned host of the cer­e­mo­ny, Kevin Hart, has passed on the job due to wide­spread pub­lic dis­ap­proval of past homo­pho­bic tweets as well as his con­tro­ver­sial stand-up routines.

With few big name stars eager to take up the man­tle due to the crit­i­cism it often draws, many out­lets are report­ing that The Academy’s cur­rent plan is to stage the show with­out a host. While seem­ing­ly anoth­er addi­tion to a laun­dry list of recent embar­rass­ments (#OscarsSoWhite, the 2017 Best Pic­ture deba­cle), doing away with the mas­ter of cer­e­monies posi­tion could be the best thing to hap­pen to the Oscars for many years.

The Oscars host tends to be an ami­able enter­tain­er who throws a few barbs at the audi­ence and keeps the fes­tiv­i­ties tick­ing along smooth­ly, with Bob Hope, Bil­ly Crys­tal and Whoopi Gold­berg being among the most suc­cess­ful. Yet the role has come under intense scruti­ny of late. There have been suc­cess­es – Ellen Degeneres was at her sparkling best at the 2014 cer­e­mo­ny – but for the most part this decade’s hosts have gar­nered more back­lash than raves.

Some have been vocal about the expec­ta­tion and pres­sure that comes with the job. James Fran­co, often list­ed among the worst hosts fol­low­ing his 2011 appear­ance along­side Anne Hath­away, felt par­tic­u­lar­ly aggriev­ed by the recep­tion he received. ​“Here’s the hyp­o­crit­i­cal thing,” he told David Let­ter­man, ​“lead­ing up to the Oscars, I couldn’t hear enough about how peo­ple don’t care about the Oscars any more: it’s dead, it’s bor­ing… well, as soon as you don’t host the way they want you to, they sud­den­ly care and they won’t shut up about it!”

More recent­ly, 2013 host Seth Mac­Far­lane took a wider view of the sit­u­a­tion, telling Enter­tain­ment Week­ly. ​“It’s a gig that has all eyes on it, and when you’re doing some­thing that’s that much in the spot­light, with that much focus on it, that much inten­si­ty, you’re going to have a lot of opin­ions from a lot of peo­ple. I’m try­ing to think of the last time that I read a review of the Oscars the next day where every­one is rav­ing about it – it’s been a long time.”

There­in lies the prob­lem. Tens of mil­lions of peo­ple may watch the broad­cast live every year in the US, but hun­dreds of mil­lions more watch glob­al­ly, with more still catch­ing up in the fol­low­ing days. That’s a huge audi­ence to sat­is­fy, and as the old adage goes, you can’t please every­one. Some view­ers may take offence at ​“edgy” con­tent, where­as oth­ers might decry a polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect host as ​“safe” or ​“bor­ing”. Some demand that the host use their plat­form to address social issues, oth­ers just want to see star-filled self­ies. It is an impos­si­ble job with para­me­ters that vary depend­ing on who you ask, much like cast­ing James Bond or pick­ing a Glas­ton­bury headliner.

Be it for polit­i­cal, moral or enter­tain­ment rea­sons, it seems very few pub­lic fig­ures fit the bill, and the deci­sion to have no host at all is the right one for a cer­e­mo­ny whose appeal appears to be in rapid decline. At any­thing from three to four hours between the open­ing mono­logue to the Best Pic­ture win­ner being announced, the Oscars can be a slog to sit through, so remov­ing the lengthy rou­tines that a celebri­ty host is oblig­ed to deliv­er could help to trim the run­time and hold the audience’s atten­tion for longer.

Most cru­cial­ly, not hav­ing a host means the focus will be back on the films. That doesn’t pre­clude any oppor­tu­ni­ties for com­e­dy, or address­ing seri­ous issues, which can still be achieved with­in the frame­work of award­ing excel­lence in cin­e­ma. After all, isn’t that the whole rea­son these awards exist

There should still be room for rous­ing musi­cal num­bers from nom­i­nees (Robin Williams per­form­ing South Park’s ​‘Blame Cana­da’ in 1999, John Leg­end and Common’s ren­di­tion of Glo­ry in 2015. Pre­sen­ters and recip­i­ents should still be able to com­ment on the state of the indus­try – one of the most talked about moments from 2018’s Gold­en Globes was Oprah Winfrey’s speech on the #MeToo move­ment. Yet aside from tra­di­tion, there’s no rea­son why we need a host to tie the entire spec­ta­cle together.

For var­i­ous rea­sons the role of Oscars host has become a poi­soned chal­ice, but it’s also one which feels increas­ing­ly redun­dant. Get­ting rid of a host for this year’s awards won’t sud­den­ly solve all of Oscar’s prob­lems, or guar­an­tee that the night pass with­out con­tro­ver­sy (such things are part and par­cel of the Acad­e­my Awards). It may, how­ev­er, help the 90 year old insti­tu­tion to move with the times.